Child's Play

by Alison Taylor

  ‘Nonetheless,’ Dewi persisted, ‘they can’t possibly be everywhere at once. The water frontage of this site is about two miles, the road frontage is nearer three, and between the two it must be two miles, if not more. Someone bent on escape wouldn’t encounter too many obstacles.’

  ‘No, I agree. And—’ She broke off as someone rapped on the door and rose quickly to answer. When the door opened, Dewi thought night must have fallen. Every vestige of light was obliterated by a mountainous woman in chef’s tunic and trousers, proffering a tray draped with a snowy cloth. Freya took the tray, murmured her thanks and shut the door. ‘I was about to say,’ she went on, removing the cloth to reveal white china and a plate of mixed biscuits, ‘that I’m more concerned with the possibility of Sukie’s having had an accident in the grounds.’ She poured coffee, her movements steady and methodical. ‘We began searching when she failed to show up at the stables yesterday morning to exercise her horse.’ Handing him a cup, offering biscuits, she continued, ‘By nightfall, every building and most of the woods had been thoroughly scoured.’

  ‘Is there any chance she’s gone off with a man?’

  ‘If that were the case I would know.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘My girls do not associate with the locals and her parents are not aware of any significant relationships in her life.’

  ‘When did her parents last see her?’

  ‘The day she returned here after the Easter holiday.’

  ‘And how did she get back? Train? Car?’

  ‘Their chauffeur drove her up to London, where she caught the express. She’s quite old enough to travel alone.’

  ‘She’s quite old enough to do a lot of things,’ Dewi insisted, ‘which is why I said she might be with a man. And with all due respect, ma’am, you’re the last person her friends would tell, whether she’s missing or not.’

  ‘I’m afraid I disagree, Sergeant Prys.’ Her tone was chilly. ‘My girls would tell me and as they have not, I’m confident there is nothing to tell. So,’ she went on, ‘how will you proceed?’

  ‘I’m only instructed to take details, ma’am. My inspector will decide on the next step.’ Pulling a form from his briefcase, he laid it on the desk. ‘Perhaps you’d be kind enough to complete this.’

  Freya’s nails dragged the paper towards her. She uncapped the pen and, without once referring to the closed file at her elbow, attended to every question.

  ‘A recent photo would also help,’ Dewi said when she handed back the form. Sukie, he saw, was seventeen years old, five feet four inches tall, slimly built, Caucasian, with medium-length, wavy brown hair, grey eyes and no distinguishing marks, scars, or tattoos. Her parents had a grand-sounding address near Newbury and her mother, but not her father, had a title.

  Freya slipped a photograph from the file and pushed it across the desk. Contemplating another very pretty girl with the sheen of wealth about her, Dewi asked, ‘Why doesn’t her father have a title as well?’

  ‘Lady Hester’s father is a peer of the realm and she therefore has a title in her own right. As she married a commoner, her children remain untitled.’ She paused. ‘I should say “child”. Sukie’s an only child.’

  He stowed form and photograph in his briefcase. ‘Are you sure she wasn’t worried about anything? Exams, for instance?’

  ‘She has no external examinations until next year. In any case she isn’t academically ambitious. She prefers to coast along, taking what life offers. Horses are her current passion.’

  ‘Does she have a mobile phone? Most youngsters do, these days.’

  ‘I don’t allow mobile phones at school,’ Freya told him. ‘Nor do I let the girls have unsupervised access to computers, so I don’t think there’s any possibility of Sukie’s having developed some relationship over the Internet.’ Meeting his eyes, she went on, ‘I’m very strict, Sergeant Prys, particularly about the possessions the girls are permitted to have here. While they come from backgrounds you would see as uniformly wealthy, wealth is, in fact, just as relative as poverty. I would be very naïve not to recognise that, and stupid not to take steps to preclude, wherever possible, the likelihood of envy and temptation. I try to ensure a level playing field.’

  ‘So,’ Dewi said, ‘on this scale of relative wealth, where do the Melvilles feature?’

  She offered a brief, oddly sardonic smile. ‘Clinging to the very bottom with their fingernails. Her father’s family has a poor track record of success in any sphere, and I’m afraid he simply runs true to form. He and Lady Hester depend on handouts from her parents.’

  ‘Are they rich?’ Dewi asked.

  ‘Extremely so.’

  ‘Kidnapping Sukie could be worth somebody’s while, then,’ he remarked.

  ‘Barring the odd one or two, abducting any of my pupils could be worth someone’s while,’ she pointed out rather acidly.

  ‘Which, with respect, is why you should have reported her missing as soon as you knew.’

  ‘I’m aware of that now,’ she replied quietly. ‘Yesterday I thought at first that she might have had an accident. Later I assumed her absence was some kind of prank and I was simply giving her time to return.’ Frowning, she added, ‘Surely, by now, if she had been abducted, there would be a ransom demand?’

  ‘I can’t really comment on that,’ Dewi told her. ‘We don’t have much experience of kidnappings. But you’re probably right. Anyway,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘thank you for your help, Dr Scott. And the coffee. Either myself or Inspector Tuttle will be in touch very soon.’

  Freya too rose. ‘See my secretary on your way out,’ she said. ‘She’s put together plans of the grounds and buildings, and some other literature which may be of use.’

  When Dewi emerged on to the sun-soaked forecourt Torrance, now on her own two legs, was leaning against the wing of his car, leather riding boots covered in dust.

  She was not as tall as he had thought, but her legs were long and exceedingly shapely. With the back of her hand, she brushed at a loose strand of glorious flaxen hair, adding a smear of dirt to the smudge of freckles across her nose.

  ‘One of us will get clapped in irons if I’m seen talking to you,’ he told her. ‘Matron’s already given me a rocket for having “truck”.’

  She laughed again, spontaneously, and he thought she must laugh often. ‘She doesn’t miss much.’

  ‘She missed Sukie’s disappearing act.’ He dropped his briefcase on the passenger seat. ‘But then, so did everyone else, apparently. How well d’you know her?’

  Torrance shrugged. ‘Quite well, I guess, but not especially so. I taught her to ride a few months back.’

  ‘Any idea why she’s legged it?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ She frowned, again mystified.

  ‘Run away,’ he explained. ‘Decamped. Absconded. Whatever.’

  She flicked at a leaf shard stuck to the car bonnet. ‘Dr Scott isn’t sure Sukie did run away. She thinks she might have had an accident. That’s why we spent most of yesterday doing a horseback search. The security guards were out on foot, too. Generally they just tootle around in their little white trucks.’

  ‘Keeping to the drive and tracks?’

  She nodded, scuffing her toe on the ground. ‘If someone wanted to get out they could, you know. They wouldn’t even have to go through the main gate. The walls are full of holes.’ She met his gaze; uneasily, he thought. ‘You should talk to Sean. He knows every inch of the place.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘The groundsman.’ Then she smiled. ‘Funny, but he looks quite like you. Most of the girls have a dreadful crush on him.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘In the village down the road. With his ma, I think.’

  A woman came round the side of the building, striding purposefully towards them, a dark-green divided skirt slapping against her bulging thighs. Hurriedly Dewi vaulted into the car and fired the ignition. ‘She looks as if she means business. I’d better go.

  ‘Yeah, you better had
.’ Torrance’s smile broadened. ‘But I hope you come again.’

  Long before he reached the gates he could see Randall, with his dog beside him, sitting on its haunches, waiting in the shadows cast by the trees.

  ‘They rang down to say you were on your way,’ Randall explained when Dewi stopped the car.

  Dewi looked up at him. ‘D’you keep a record of the comings and goings?’

  ‘That depends on who’s coming and who’s going,’ Randall said. ‘I book tradesmen and folk on business, and strangers, of course, but I don’t keep tally on the school governors, for instance, or the families, or, basically, anybody I’ve been warned to expect. They’ll sign in at the school. There’s a visitors’ book.’

  ‘What about staff? Who lives out?’

  Randall scratched his ear. ‘Bar the teachers, Matron and Sally, the head cook, all of them, I reckon. A lot of the domestics and kitchen staff and so forth are contract workers, and the faces can change from month to month. I’ll know who they are, though, because they get ID cards off the contractor.’ He paused. ‘Then there’s the two caretakers and the two groundsmen. They’re regular employees, like me. We all keep time sheets and the bursar collects them every Thursday.’

  ‘Are you told about people who visit when you’re not on duty?’

  Randall favoured him with an eloquent look. ‘Like I said, I don’t know more than Dr Scott thinks I need know and that’s not much.’

  In response Dewi offered an equally eloquent look. ‘Do me a favour,’ he said. ‘Your front door can’t be more than fifteen feet from the gates. Don’t tell me you can’t at least hear the to-ings and fro-ings, especially the night-time ones.’ Glancing at the dog, which seemed to be smiling at him, he added, ‘Not to mention the fact that German Shepherds are prone to raising Cain at the slightest noise.’

  The other man’s ruddy cheeks turned purple. ‘I could get the sack if Dr Scott knew I’d been talking to you! I’m trying to help and all you can do is make snide remarks!’

  Sensing his master’s anger, the dog’s expression changed in an instant and Dewi heard a snarl growing in its throat.

  ‘I’m just commenting,’ Dewi said mildly. ‘I’m not implying anything and I’m not suggesting you should be gawping out of the window every five minutes.’ Man and dog continued to stare at him, both bristling. ‘But you must hear the gates opening.’

  ‘Did you hear them?’ Randall demanded. ‘They run smooth as silk, because it’s my job to see to them and I make sure they work properly.’

  ‘OK,’ conceded Dewi. ‘Point taken. Apology offered.’

  ‘Hm.’ The lodge keeper grunted and his dog resumed its open-mouthed smile.

  ‘I’ll be on my way, then,’ Dewi told him.

  ‘If it’s boyfriends you want to know about,’ Randall said over his shoulder as he went to open the gates, ‘it’s no use coming to me.’ He hauled on the huge iron latch. ‘They’d come in over the wall, or through one of the wickets, the same way the girls get out.’

  Dewi touched the accelerator and let the car glide slowly towards the entrance. Drawing alongside, he braked. ‘Do the girls get out?’

  ‘Now and then, I’ve heard the women gossiping about girls being seen in town when they should be abed. But that’s as much as I can tell you.’

  *

  Jack’s office was empty when Dewi returned to the police station. He found Janet alone in the CID room. ‘Where’s Inspector Tuttle?’ he asked. ‘I’m supposed to report back to him.’

  ‘Downstairs in the squad room with Mr McKenna,’ she replied. ‘Organising uniform and dog handlers to search the Hermitage.’

  ‘I thought he was waiting for me to report hack.’

  ‘There’s been a development. Our chief constable had a telephone call from a heavily titled gentleman who identified himself as the missing girl’s grandfather, so it’s now all systems go.’

  ‘Are they sending a mobile incident room?’ he asked, upending his briefcase.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ She rose and began looking through the plans and brochures spilled across his desk.

  ‘How many officers are going out?’

  ‘Six from here, six from Caernarfon, eight from Anglesey, plus five dogs, including Bryn the Wonder Dog.’ Glancing at a plan of the grounds, she set it aside. ‘Who,’ she added, ‘can detect the faintest whiff of humankind from ten thousand yards and under fifty feet of snow.’

  ‘You’re not far out,’ Dewi replied, picking up the discarded plan and a sheaf of other papers. ‘The search team will need these. And I’ll get these circulated,’ he added, waving the missing persons form and Sukie’s portrait. He handed Janet the school prospectus. ‘You’ll have to make do with this for now.’

  As soon as he had gone, Janet sat down with the glossy book and fast became enthralled by a kaleidoscope of images that seemed to come straight from the school stories she had devoured as a child. She gazed longingly at the many photographs of fresh-faced girls against various backdrops: the main building, the new teaching block, the music rooms, the sports hall, the playing fields, the stables, the competition-sized riding arena, the boathouse at the Strait’s edge, even the Swiss Alps. Most impressive of all, she thought, was the enormous swimming pool, an untouched relic of the Hermitage’s early days.

  Each of the school’s four houses was named after an English royal dynasty, each had a captain elected by her peers, each was identified by an item of uniform and a sash tied round the waist for sports. Tudor was green, York pillar-box red, Lancaster bright golden yellow and Windsor a deep, rich blue.

  So like those pictured in her old story books were these girls that Janet began to search their faces, looking for the villainness always defined in fiction by ginger hair and mean eyes. Blondes, she recalled, would be glamorous but unreliable, brunettes mysterious, with their potential for good or ill only discovered in the denouement. It was the ordinary, mousy-haired girls who proved themselves heroic. Then she laughed at herself and was still laughing when Dewi returned.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Is this place for real?’

  ‘It is, believe me. Right down to the battleaxe of a matron.’

  ‘Elspeth Hardie, she’s called, and she’s a fully fledged nurse.’

  ‘I gathered that from the way she dresses.’

  ‘What’s Dr Scott like?’

  He took his time replying. ‘On the surface, a classy blonde with impeccable manners and sexy perfume. Underneath she’s probably hard as nails. She certainly doesn’t like criticism, implied or otherwise.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be much use in a job like that if she weren’t tough. According to the prospectus, she’s ex-army and, I quote, “attained the rank of Captain before resigning her commission to follow a long-cherished ambition to enter teaching”.’

  ‘What else does the prospectus say?’

  ‘Not much. It’s primarily designed to persuade parents to part with money.’

  ‘It obviously works, then. They’ve got two hundred and twenty-eight girls currently on the books and at fifteen thousand a throw, that’s roughly three and half million a year in basic fees alone, plus extra for music lessons, art classes, dancing lessons, riding, livery costs, fencing, sailing and winter sports.’

  ‘Aside from the running costs, staff salaries must be enormous.’

  ‘That depends on whether Scott employs the best, or people with little chance of getting a job elsewhere. If I’m not mistaken, she’s already got one convicted offender on the books. I think the groundsman is Sean O’Connor. He and his mates got community service for trashing a pub after a drinking binge, and while it was ages ago and he’s a sort of mate of mine and he’s kept out of trouble since, he’s still got a record.’

  ‘And that just goes to prove there are records and records,’ Janet observed. ‘Anyway, even if half the staff belong behind bars, I still can’t wait to see the place. I always wanted to go to boarding school.’

  ‘D
id you?’ He was surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when I was young, I read a lot of books by the likes of Angela Brazil and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer about the wonderful adventures of boarding-school life.’

  ‘Absolute rubbish, most probably.’

  ‘So my father used to say. That’s why I ended up with the hoi polloi at Ysgol Tryfan.’ Her dark eyes glinted with mischief. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t show. Everyone at the Hermitage will think you’re one of their own.’

  3

  Almost with the zeal of a crusader, Freya had come to the headship of the school ten years before with certain philosophies fully formed and ready for realisation, foremost among them the belief that personalities must be cleansed of preconception and messy emotion before her educative process could take root. Inevitably, those with most to gain from her mentoring rose to the top; the rest were left to their own devices.

  Knowledge, in its broadest sense, was to Freya the currency of power and therefore withheld from those who could not appreciate its value or manipulate its uses. Mindful that her ability to control depended on the breadth of her own knowledge, she insisted the staff kept nothing from her, however trivial. The dissenters and the disaffected faded from the scene one by one, leaving her with a team obedient to her leadership. If, occasionally, a small voice at the back of her mind might hint that in disposing of the spirited she had rendered herself dependent on the weak and inept, she ignored the warning.

  In going missing, Sukie had undermined her power base and created a mystery that was already eating into Freya’s authority. When Hester Melville learned early that morning of her daughter’s absence, she ran for help to her father, whose power far outweighed anything at Freya’s disposal. Consequently, shortly before the school sat down to lunch, the police informed her that a full-scale search would commence within the hour.

  Standing commandingly on the refectory dais, she explained the situation to the girls and staff, knowing that with whatever skill she chose her words, its gravity would be obvious. Long before lunch was over the scent of hysteria soured the air.